Question

Explain what Kant meant by "categorical imperative." Explain why you do or do not agree with this idea. Describe the relationship between Kant's idea of the categorical imperative and his search for morality. Why does Kant think morality is a duty for all humans?

Answer 1

In the ethics of Kant, the unconditional moral principle sees an action as right or wrong, based on moral duty, without taking the consequences into account. Categorical imperative is Kant's proposed way of evaluating our motivations for why we act. According to him, the moral law is within us and with it reason itself is put on the line so to speak. Here our actions are based on moral principles, and are an end in themselves because they come from our moral goodness. They are not to attain something but to emulate what you would want to consider as a universal law. It is a secular way of dealing with moral duty.

According to me, the categorical imperative can seem inhuman. Kant states that morality must be motivated only by duty and nothing else - empathy, emotion, and love should not motivate action. For example, if you visit a sick friend in a hospital, and the friend says, "Thanks for coming, I really appreciate it," the proper response is " I only came because it is my duty." This seems intuitively wrong to many people. Kant believes that we must give honest answers no matter what the circumstance is, though it may lead to terrible consequences, the rightness or the wrongness is not influenced by its consequences. Criticism given to him for this is that as well-designed as Kant's system may be, it does not always provide clear moral answers to serious moral quandaries. The awkwardness of this stems from committing your ethical action to rational duty to an extreme degree. This often conflicts with our normative responses to extreme situations.

Kant places special importance on the pure part of philosophy. He draws heavily on observations and ideas about human nature. By the "pure" or "a priori" moral philosophy, Kant has in mind a philosophy grounded exclusively on principles that are inherent in and revealed through the operations of reason. According to Kant, morality's commands are unconditional. He believes that morality presents itself to humans as categorical imperative, and that it is from this imperative, together with various facts about the world and our embodied agency, that we derive all specific moral duties. Kant says that the supreme moral principle is, for rational beings who do not necessarily follow the moral law, a categorical imperative. It is an imperative because it commands and constraints us with ultimate authority and without regard to our preferences or circumstances.

Kant believes that morality gives rise to a notion of the highest good. The highest good consists in a world of universal, maximal virtue, grounding universal, maximal happiness. For Kant virtue is unconditionally good, whereas happiness is conditionally good; happiness is good when it is pursued and enjoyed virtuously. Unfortunately, Kant noted, virtue does not ensure well-being and may even conflict with it. Further, there is no real possibility of moral perfection in this life and indeed few of us fully deserve the happiness we are lucky enough to enjoy. Reason cannot prove or disprove the existence of Divine Providence, nor the immorality of the soul, which seem necessary to rectify these things. Nevertheless, Kant argued, an unlimited amount of time to perfect ourselves ( immortality) and a commensurate achievement of well-being ( insured by God) are "postulates" required by reason when employed in moral matters. This calls forward Kant's thought of morality as a duty for all humans.